Season 3 and the League of Legends Champion Series

In the wake of the yesterday's exciting conclusion ( if you click that link you are definitely going to see spoilers ) to the MLG Summer Arena, Riot Games has unveiled the League of Legends Champion Series, a weekly, top tier set of matches between the best players in the world. This also resonated amongst social media, leading to several interesting tweets about the upcoming season.Check out the announcement from RedBeard, Riot's VP of eSports :

"With the Season Two World Championship only two months away and the Regional tournaments about to heat up, all eyes will be on some of the most exciting matches in League of Legends history. Everything’s on the line for teams looking ahead to Season Three. The top three teams from the EU & NA Regionals at Gamescom and PAX will each qualify for the League of Legends Championship Series, a completely new league coming in Season Three.

The League of Legends Championship Series is a global league of the top professional, salaried teams and will feature a structured season with multiple matches per week and playoff events leading up to the World Championship. Even better, all of this coverage will be free to watch live in HD. The best eight teams from North America and Europe, plus top teams from each Asian region, will compete for regional dominance. Winners from each region will then battle for the World Championship title with millions of dollars in prizes up for grabs. Furthermore, our Challenger Circuit partners will be back and better than ever, hosting major tournaments that will act as the proving grounds for the next generation of teams vying for a shot at competing in the League of Legends Championship Series.

We’ll have more details after the Season Two World Champions are crowned in Los Angeles on October 13, 2012. Until then, catch all of our coverage of Gamescom and PAX and witness the greatest teams in the world compete for a spot in the Season Two World Championship and the upcoming League of Legends Championship Series.

Let’s recap:

The League of Legends Championship Series: the top eight teams from the US and EU, plus top teams from the Asian regions

The top three teams from Gamescom and PAX immediately qualify

Weekly regional pro League of Legends matches live, for free, in HD

Millions of dollars at stake

Regular season, regional playoffs and a spectacular World Championship

Critical Challenger Circuit events featuring up-and-coming teams vying for a shot at the League of Legends Championship Series"

Brandon Beck, CEO and co-founder of Riot games, also conducted a recent interview with Forbes where he discussed all sorts of season 3 related stuff, including the championship series, Riot's "Thunderdome" - an even that spawned the most recent ARAM map -, and the amount of money that is going to be at stake. Here is a small excerpt from the interview about eSports and the massive prize pools we've been seeing:

"How important do you think that prize pool is to legitimize, not
necessarily for the gamers themselves, but for people outside that
still look at eSports as a niche, if they are even aware of it at all?

The numbers probably have some bearing on how serious the mainstream
views the sport, because from some respect, those numbers are
representative of how big the sport is. But I think our focus is more on
making sure the players do really make a viable career out of being
professional. We don’t want athletes that are going to have to hold a
day job to pay their expenses; we want athletes that can dedicate all
their time to practice and focusing on their game."

Following the trend, Travis S. George, one of the Lead Producers for League of Legends, rattled off some very interesting tweets revealing Riot's global league and paying, on top of prize winnings, salaries for professional players.

Impressive, right? What a marvelous time to be a part of the eSports community.

its not only the top .01%, a massive amount of the player base thrives off of the eSports and competitive aspect of the game.

i'm super sad we haven't yet got internal replays yet tho, seems silly. i expect we'll see some big changes after the season closes out ( just like s1 since its harsh to out range change things like masteries or items this close to finals )

They need shorter seasons and more ELO resets. People can get better all they want, but if they tanked their ELO beforehand only the very best can climb back out. The rest of us have to sit around waiting for an ELO reset to get back to base so we can not tank the next time. It's frustrating to the non-professional players to be stuck with no way to improve because the teammates are so bad.

To those who are going to lead off with "Carry Yourself out of ELO Hell Noob" type replies: You try carrying a game where, for example, two people both insisted on going top and are more busier typing insults at each other than playing, the AD Carry has rage quit because 'the support is noob', and said support is feeding to the tune of 0-8-0 in the first 10 mins. That's the kind of thing that happens at low ELO. If you are a platinum player, then sure, you can carry that mess. For the majority of us who are good but not that good, our only hope of getting back to decent ELO and a fun game is to practice a lot and then wait for a reset, then not mess it up again.

I absolutely know that feeling. About a week ago I descended into Normal draft Elo hell, and have literally had 2 wins out of ~20 games for the past week and a half. It makes trying to learn a new champion, well, hell. And I doubt I could even play much as my main because all the noobs and trolls would get mad at me for carrying so hard.

I agree with Physicist. I am someone who LoL would consider a great customer, never been to tribunal, spent 100 bucks on skins and run pages, and have introduced players to the game and shown them the ropes.

I have very little interest in the competitive scene and neither do any of the people I have shown the game to. I feel Riot should support this, but a shorter season would be nice and large rewards are not necessary. If there is a large interest and fan base let them sponsor the pro's riot does not need to shell out millions of dollars that could have been spent on an extra development team.

@Anonymous, the money going to esports players isn't going to affect the game itself at all. These money are most likely pooled from other money source which has nothing to do with developing the game better.

If you didn't know each company adjusts their money to their product and marketing. Some companies might make their product for 5$ (per product) and spend 100000$ on marketing this is very common.

Pulling the money out from Esports players isn't going to help the game itself anyway.

I myself enjoy esports, this is great way to spend money and it will bring alot of new people to LoL and popularity over the globe = more money from skins and champs. You can do the math.

I have no problem with the money, but having such long seasons is actually a detriment to non-pro players due to how the ELO system works. They can keep giving out the money all they want, but they need seasons that are closer in length to Starcraft 2 than pro football.

@Moobeat i would really appreciate that if you could disable commenting if you don't have account, i really like your blog but i do not want it to turn something like LoL forums, current setting just lets trolls spam here without a name by disabling this system will make this blog much better.